Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many educational access payments have been made to farmers in the last five years; and what estimate he has made of the number that will be made in financial years (a) 2021-22 and (b) 2022-23.

Educational access funding is available to farmers in England through the Environmental Stewardship (ES) and Countryside Stewardship (CS) schemes. Educational access provisions will remain in the scheme until its final application round in 2023 (for agreements starting 1 January 2024). Defra would encourage all farmers and land managers to take up educational access options under CS where possible.

The total number of claims including educational access that have been paid over the past five years (England only) can be found in the table below:

Claims are still being processed for 2021/2022 financial year, but to date 187 educational access payments have been made.

Due to the effect COVID-19 restrictions may have had on the number of visits that can be undertaken, and a large increase in the number of new CS agreements that include the option of educational access funding, it is very hard to predict with accuracy the number of educational access payments that will be made for the remainder of the 2021/2022 and the 2022/2023 financial years.